Toy Review – Marvel Legends The Wrecker from Hasbro

I bought Wrecker for two reasons:

1. I already have Thunderball and Piledriver and Wrecker is their leader. Good planning, Hasbro.
2. He was listed on Amazon for the completely sane price of $14.99 (with free Prime shipping).

Well, the fact that he’s purple and green appealed to me as well, but did not influence my decision much.

I am familiar with Wrecker because Hasbro made an action figure of the guy. That’s it. Actually, it’s not even because they made a figure of him; it’s because of the figures of his teammates. I had to buy them because I wanted the awesome Arnim Zola build-a-figure. Okay, well – I only had to buy one of them, but when I found Piledriver (who was very hard to find), I couldn’t very well not buy the hard to find figure, could I?

I’m sorry if this has all been confusing. That’s just how collecting Marvel Legends is.

So after I had Thunderball and Piledriver I decided I should probably look them up. I did and read the story of the Wrecking Crew and their leader, Wrecker, who has an enchanted crowbar. This is all very silly, but not as silly as The Cutting Crew.

Later I saw the Wrecking Crew on Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. As with most things on that show, they were handled quite well and came across as a genuine threat.

FIRST GLANCE

Guess who’s got warpy-bendy package legs? Wrecker does! This is a very large figure – dwarfing most of the standard 6” Legends and even looming over the Masters of the Universe Classics that I haven’t put away yet.

PACKAGING

I like the Marvel Legends blister card. Not as much as the new Legends packaging (reviews coming soon because I lucked out and got a bunch of the Cap figures and one of the Spideys at Target for fifteen bucks each before the price hike), but it’s good, comic booky stuff. I like the graphics and the ease of opening.

As you can see from the card art, Bulldozer is the other version that Hasbro will never release, which is odd because he’s the one down below in the “Collect ‘Em All” portion. It’s a shame because he’s the final member of the team.

And way to neuter these guys, Hasbro. “Wrong-Doers”? That sounds like a bunch of juveniles that steal candy from Eckerd and knock over the magazine spinner on the way out. Is “Evil-Doers” politically incorrect or something now? Did I miss a memo?

LOOKS

Wrecker has a very angry head. Like all Marvel Legends, this is a very distinctive face sculpt.

Before I get any further I want to address all of the odd textures that show up on some of the Marvel Legends, particularly the larger figures.

What the heck is up with this? The first One I really noticed it on was Toy Biz’s Bishop figure. The whole figure was covered with unsightly ridges and lines, much like Wrecker’s head and chest. To this day I don’t understand that decision. Several Marvel Legends have ugly and unnecessary texturing that just make them look like poorly done bootleg toys. I don’t get it.

As you might guess, I am not happy with the textures on Wrecker’s head and chest. Especially since the rest of the figure doesn’t have this mess going on. The paint on the head is solid. The eyes are centered and the mouth is particularly well done. Wrecker’s teeth are an unsightly yellow – appropriate for a wrong-doer, I suppose – and the flesh color around them is placed well.

Proportionally Wrecker is well done. He’s thick and brutish and looks intimidating. His gloves, boots, and belt provide a great contrast to the green suit and the bit of lime green detailing on the jacket looks nice. It’s a very simple but effective character design, especially with the traditional purple and green Bad Guy colors.

The belt is a separately sculpted piece that actually looks a bit like yesterdays’ Batman utility belt. I’m not sure what Wrecker keeps in his little capsules. Steroids, maybe?

I’m happy with the paint on this figure. I think it was an interesting decision to leave the green parts solid and put a blue wash on the purple parts. It creates even more contrast and gives Wrecker a little more character. All of the paint is well done. No blotchy or spattered bits.

ACCESSORIES

Wrecker comes with a big-ass enchanted crowbar and Rocket Raccoon’s head and gun.

The crowbar is great. Like Wrecker, it’s simple but good. It’s made of a heavy plastic rather than rubber and feels very solid. The shape is great and the sculpt features a ton of pitting and a paint job that highlights it. It fits perfectly into Wrecker’s hand and stays put.

I’ll be reviewing Rocket Raccoon on the NeedlessThings Facebook page. I think.

FUN

Wrecker has great articulation and balance for a big guy. Sometimes a larger figure will have restricted joints, but Wrecker does pretty well. He can achieve a pretty big number of poses and looks great menacing smaller figures.

I had fun messing around with this guy for a while. The design honestly looks kind of plain, but the colors are striking and his mask is different from pretty much any other Marvel character. And he has a magic crowbar. How could that not be fun?

OVERALL

Out of all the guys in the Wrecking Crew, Wrecker is the one I would have been most likely to buy without the enticement of a build-a-figure piece. I can imagine walking through Target (I say Target because I am still buying most of my toys there), seeing this guy (for fifteen bucks) and just picking him up for the heck of it. But probably only if I had been in a multi-week dry spell where I hadn’t been able to find any cool new stuff that I actually wanted. That’s always when I end up buying one-off figures or something from a line I don’t normally collect.

As a matter of fact, I came dangerously close to spending seventy bucks on one of those swanky Japanese Godzilla figures with, like, twenty different words in the product title – Bandai Tamashi Nations SH MonsterArts Godzilla 2000 Millennium Edition Godzilla figure. I really wanted that thing, but the day before it was scheduled to ship from Amazon I came to my sense and realized I didn’t need to be spending that much on a 6” scale figure, no matter how rad it looked.

Anyway, Wrecker is by no means a must-have figure and isn’t even a villain I had heard of until a couple of years ago. But he looks pretty great aside from all the stupid texturing on his head and torso, which isn’t that big of a deal, but frustrates me because I don’t understand it. The bottom line is that if you want Wrecker in this scale, this is it. He’s never going to be any better.

I’ve seen Wrecker quite a few times in brick and mortar stores since I bought mine. He’s also available on Amazon for that fifteen bucks pretty frequently if you keep an eye out.

4 out of 5